Obsessing about sports we would otherwise never pay attention to is a welcome break from politics.
I’ve taken a 16-day holiday from global politics.
I’ve stopped watching the nightly news about warring nations, bickering politicians and HarrisBidenTrump.
Instead, I spend my nights cheering athletes I’ve never heard of, from countries I haven’t visited, competing in sports I know nothing about and then crying to national anthems whose words I can’t understand.
It’s Olympics time again, when we watch the world’s best athletes run like the wind, swim like fish and leap like a gazelle. while we exercise our thumbs in the Olympic TV-remote, high-speed channel-switching event.
Still, in a time of non-stop world crises and division, it’s a relief to have two weeks of peaceful competition featuring muscles not missiles and competing anthems not arms.
As always, there are nattering nabobs of Olympic negativity.
Others protest that the entire Olympics is a colossal waste of money, phony patriotism and fake peace.
But I’m a sucker for them, especially this year.
For starters, I thought the Olympic opening was awesome. I’m not usually a fan of choreographed spectacles so I tuned in briefly, expecting to quickly tune out.
But I was hooked by the stunning Olympic backdrop of Paris: the Seine River at night dotted with musicians in torch-lit boats, then the Olympic torch relay winding through the magnificent Paris streets.
Incredibly, there wasn’t a single orange construction cone to be seen.
Like many, I thought she might never sing publicly again. Yet there she was on the tower, slightly pale but singing her heart out gloriously — and you had to root for her wherever you lived, especially here.
Quebec is a province that’s always punched above its artistic weight level with world-known filmmakers like Denis Villeneuve, Denys Arcand and Xavier Dolan; musicians Leonard Cohen, Robert Charlebois and Arcade Fire.
But no star shines as brightly as Dion’s, so there was definitely some Quebec pride in watching this 14th child of a family from a North Shore village come back to wow the world.
The Olympics are filled with often hyped-up underdog soap stories, as broadcasters compete to create melodramatic personal tales.
Announcer: ”As the starting gun goes and the runners begin, Kirsten Kelly of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sets out on her lonely, courageous journey.
“Kirsten’s quest began when she was abandoned at birth and found in a basket in some bulrushes by her foster father and soon-to-be running coach Jeb (Moses) Johnson who … (blah blah blah).”
But Céline’s comeback appearance was a true inspiration, a momentary triumph that touched the world.
Apart from all the Olympian drama, I love the Olympic trivia, which also offers distracting relief.
Instead of listening to puffed-up political speeches that hyperinflate inflation and immigration, we get hooked on statistical minutiae.
We’re obsessed by one-quarter of 1/100th of a fraction of a second in the men’s 100-metre swimming medley.
We’re riveted by the gymnast’s toe position during the women’s Amanar /Yurchenko double pike vault with 2½ twists and a layout backward salto, with added peach vanilla topping.
We’re transfixed by the airborne miniature female gymnasts who, in the words of one announcer, “treat gravity like a suggestion.”
Also the divers who twist, spiral and somersault through the air, but barely leave a bubble in the water.
Some sports like javelin and archery are leftovers from our hunting days, while swimming and running are ancient skills, possibly born from fleeing our predators.
But I’m not sure what purpose the backward crawl ever served humanity except maybe to keep watching a crocodile as it chased you downriver.
There are also new crowd-pleasing sports that allegedly evoke the Games’ ancient spirit. These include BMX cycling, breakdancing and beach volleyball, which presumably goes back to ancient Rome, where it was played using the heads of captured Visigoths.
How and why does any of this relate to our daily lives? Most of us can’t do a single chin-up, let alone a quadruple midair somersault followed by a double Stutz, triple Tkatchev, reverse Timochenko vault.
The only place we ever really need to run today is to catch a bus.
But somehow it’s moving to sit back in our easy chairs and watch these hardworking, miraculously muscled wunderkinds perform.
All we have to do is use our one modern-day athletic skill: our ability to tape 24 hours of Olympic programming on three different channels — then race through the best moments in a sizzling 90 minutes, hoping for gold.